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The content of these buildings shown yesterday (the Maritime or Coastal Culture museum in Kalvag): in addition to old instruments or tools related to fishing, the museum also preserves some old types of traditional Norvegian small boats, of which I will show you two examples tonight:
- the most recent is the one (also in workshop 2), which dates back to the 1930's as far as I remember,
- the oldest of the same type (in workshop 3) dates back to 1880 and looks like it.
I would have called these boats "faerings" but I have found on an interesting page that theses boats are most probably "firkeiping" (meaning four pairs of oars). This is the link to the page: http://home.online.no/~joeolavl/viking/norse_faering.htm
And the extract from it:
What is a norse færing?
Færing = norse wooden boat with two pairs of oars.
The term "færing" refers to the number of oars on the vessel, not its site of origin in Norway (or anywhere else). "Færing" is a contraction of "firæring", which is a boat with four oars (two pairs). "Fire"="four". Therefore a "færing" refers to a norse boat of a particular size, rather than a special kind of boat. Note that a færing must be built within the norse boat building tradition to qualify as a færing.
All the different local variations of norwegian wooden boats with two pairs of oars are called færing within their type. Then you can speak of oselvarfæring, sunnmørsfæring, nordlandsfæring, nordfjordfæring, åfjordsfæring and so on.
The number of oars derives several other definitions in addition to the færing:
3 pairs of oars > trerøring (three rowers) or trekeiping (three pairs of kabes). Some areas also use seksring (six oars).
4 pairs of oars > firkeiping (four pairs). Can be used with both 4 or 8 rowers + helmsman.
5 pairs of oars > femkeiping (five pairs). 5 or 10 rowers + helmsman.
To bring in some more confusion, some older boats with 4 pairs of oars and rig are also called åttring (8 rowers). And in time they got another pair of oars, but still kept their old name åttring. So åttring could have both 4 or 5 pairs of oars, but were also rigged. The diagram on this page displays how the boat sizes in Sunnmøre led to many subcategories which developed to be inconsistent with their original number of oars and rowers.
The boats from nordland, also used the term færing for boats with four oars, but used another system for naming the larger boats. They counted the number of rom (room, i.e. the space between the thwarts), just like they did in the viking age.
This is a very rough description, as several other names still are in use along the norwegian coastline. Going into detail could easily fill a book (which actually exist in norwegian: B.Færøyvik: Vestlandsbåtar).
Definition of a færing:
A færing is a clinker built norse wooden boat with two pairs of oars and with overlapping strakes, pointed in both ends. The curved stem and stern are extensions jointed to the keel, which is the backbone of the construction. The strakes are made of wooden planks, most often of pine, spruce or oak. (But any kind of wood is acceptable as long as it is made of solid wood, and can be worked to form strakes). The ribs should be of naturally curved wood. The hull is built like a shell into which the ribs are mounted. In some areas the boats were built with the garboard curving opposite of the rest of the strakes, causing less water resistance. Such concave garboards were skillfully axed into shape rather than sawn and bent.
A færing can be rowed only or fitted with mast and sail. If a rudder is mounted (sailing boats only), it is usually mounted on the stern, equipped with a push-and pull tiller. Lenght usually varies from 14 feet to 17 feet. The hull is built very light, often less than 80 - 90 kg.
The kabes (oarlocks, keip in norwegian) can have slightly different designs, but is in general a wooden hook mounted on the gunwhale to support and hold the oar steady. The thwarts can be loose or fixed.
The færing design is virtually unchanged since the viking age, despite the geographically variations. In many ways the færing is a downscaled viking boat.
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